/m/rays

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Given the penalties given out to the Rays I say go for it if I'm a ML team. Try to see which year will be strong and which will be weak so you take advantage at the best possible time. Then when you go over don't do a Tampa, go totally nuts and grab everyone you can. Blow $10 million ($18 after penalties) and get the top 10 players available. Force MLB to create an international draft due to this, but grab the top talent for yourself first. I think the Rays were very smart to do it this year before others decide to do it as well.

I believe a primate recently asked why a team wouldn’t spend excessively one year on international free agents to load up on top-end talent and then accept that the next year they would be very limited in what they could do.

I did, for one.

For what it's worth, Tampa hasn't gone _that_ nuts with spending. If we accept BA's pre-signing period rankings as gospel, they landed the #3, #6, and #14 guys (of the top 20). That's impressive, but they haven't exactly tried to buy up the market (which would be expensive from both a supply v. demand aspect, as well as the tax). Their share of top players will be less than what we've recently seen with Toronto, Texas, and Seattle (to name three) in the pre-pool era. Also, the timing is notable - this year, all teams had the same pool, that's changing to one that varies by success (which would hurt Tampa with the top dudes). Even with the penalty, they'd still be able to sign all the other guys they've tabbed since July (bonus < 250K), so it's not going to cripple their Caribbean operations or anything.

I think this is a better strategy with the int'l market than with the domestic draft - where I think I'd try to stick within the league's parameters (after you account for the buffer).